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NORRISTOWN – Despite his court-appointed lawyer and a Montgomery County judge determining his latest appeal has “no merit,” a former Upper Merion man convicted of the 1995 murders of a Limerick mother and her toddler daughter is continuing his quest for a new trial.

Convicted double murderer Caleb Bradley Fairley has filed a petition with the Pennsylvania Superior Court, appealing county Judge William R. Carpenter’s Oct. 23 order that dismissed Fairley’s latest attempt to overturn his convictions in connection with the September 1995 strangulation deaths of Lisa Marie Manderach, 29, of Limerick, and her 19-month-old daughter Devon, in Collegeville.

Fairley, according to his notice of appeal filed in county court, appears to be representing himself in the Superior Court action. In his latest appeal, filed under the state’s Post Conviction Relief Act, Fairley asked the judge to vacate his two life prison sentences and to grant him a new trial, or in the alternative, a new sentencing hearing.

In September, county Assistant Public Defender Timothy Peter Wile, who was appointed by Carpenter to represent Fairley after Fairley filed the original appeal on Sept. 17, indicated in a letter to the judge that his “conscientious review” of Fairley’s claims revealed no “issue of arguable merit” and therefore it is “legally without merit and frivolous.” Wile, chief of the public defender’s appellate division, maintained Fairley’s petition for a new trial “lacks any basis in either law or fact and is, therefore, frivolous.”